Thanks guys. That is in fact what I did. I was thinking that if linux detected the drive that it would prep it automatically. Especially when it was copying files <4.2Gb. I formatted the drive and it works like I would expect.

I just purchased an external 500Gb usb drive this weekend and hooked it up to my LMCE core. It successfully detected it and I told it to use the LMCE file system. I then ripped a dvd to the new drive successfully (public area). Couple of questions...

1) I tried to move some movies from the public core area to the public area on the new external drive to free up some drive space. The movie was 4.4Gb and when the copy almost completed, I received that the file size limit had been exceeded and it aborted. The limit it appeared to reach was 4.2Gb (at least that was the size of the file when I did an ls -alF). Does anyone know where this file size limit would be set and why would my internal drive not have the same limit?

2) I can transfer files from my windows machines to the internal core drive using the file manager. I seem to get a permissions error when I try to copy to the new external usb drive. Can this be done?

I have started experiencing a strange problem with the Cover Art scan from the admin. When I open the page, I select DVD from the Media types pulldown. When I do this, 4 movies appear that I do not have covers assigned to yet. I uncheck all but 1 and hit Scan for cover arts. I was expecting this to simply return the possible matches for the 1 movie that I had checked. Instead it is returning 38 pages of covers including all of the mp3 Audio files that I don't have tagged. Almost appears that it is ignoring any checkbox state and media type pulldown. I know this used to work really well for me. I've recently installed the release build just this past weekend. Anyone else experiencing similar problems?

I actually like the flickr pictures that randomly display as a screensaver. I just have a couple of questions on how the files are managed.

1) Do the pictures get downloaded and saved on a daily basis in the folders /home/flickr/2008/'month'/'day'? That's what I thought originally, but looking today, a folder from 5 days ago appears to have new images that were not there yesterday. I remember because yesterday I went to the Media - Pictures - flickr folder and deleted some of the pictures that I was getting sick of seeing.

2) Folders from last month - /home/flickr/2008/03/20 for example - no longer contain any jpg image files. The only format in there are *.jpg.tnj files. Are these still being used for anything? If not, won't these take up a lot of disk space over time.

Yep, the nvidia-settings was what I tried originally. Tweaking the values a little at a time did not appear to be doing anything for video playback of ripped *.dvd files, so for a test, I tried setting the brightness to 100% using nvidia-settings. Everything was super bright like I would expect until I played a ripped movie. That was still dark like it was ignoring the nvidia settings This was last weekend, so I'll double check that.

*Edit* - I just checked this on my core which also has an nvidia card. Using nvidia-settings, changed the brightness to 100%. Then played a ripped .dvd file on the core. Video played like the brightness level was not changed.

Anyone? Feel like I'm the only one seeing this. I watched a movie again last night and I had to increase the brightness on the TV from 50% to around 72%. Can I just increase the brightness level in Xine itself (if Xine is the player LMCE uses) without effecting anything else?

Is there a way to adjust the brightness level on movies that I'm playing on my diskless MD that I have ripped on my core system? They all appear on the dark side to me. I tried tweaking the brightness level using nvidia-settings from the desktop, but the change did not appear to get reflected when I play a video. To verify this, I tried setting the nvidia-settings brightness level to full and then playing the movie again. It was still dark while everything else (menus, flickr pictures, etc) appeared washed out because of the increased brightness level.

Dave,Doesn't look like I'm going to be of much help. I played a movie last night on my diskless MD with the 1080p configuration and I didn't notice any choppy video at all. To make it even more impressive, I ripped the movie on a Windows XP box that the core sees as a shared device so the movie went from the XP box to the core and finally to the diskless MD. One difference in my configuration is that I don't have a TV card on my setup yet. Maybe that is adding just enough strain on your hardware to cause the 1080p video choppiness?

Tonight, I tried again to set up the 5200 card with 1080p resolution. Using the AVWizard, the TV would display Unsupported Signal after selecting 1080p. I figure I would try 1 last time but this time, I manually edit the xorg.conf file of the diskless MD. Used the resolution and other settings found in another post, rebooted my MD, and success! 1080p resolution. I didn't have much time to do any quality comparisons or if the video was choppy but it was supported by the card. I'll run some comparisons tomorrow since I still have the 720p config file saved and maybe update to the 16.12 driver. Thanks for the suggestions.

That's good information. I did try to make the 1080p settings change on the 5200 card last night but it looks like the card can't support that resolution. Maybe if I find a 6200 or 6500 at a good price, I'll upgrade but for now, 720p is pretty good.

Besides the stuttering in 1080p mode, did you observe a noticeable picture quality difference?